Oh my Lanta. I am so sorry for the lack of update. It just so happens that my little town in Ohio, (and all the surrounding little towns) got an unexpected flood, (we had about three feet deep water in our yard and everyone around us' basements) and therefore, or main power plant of our town broke down, leaving us cableless and internetless, and busy with the clean up. Plus, I've got more than enough of dram going on, and my first day of eighth grade was yesturday, and they seem to think I have all of this time on my hands, considering they are giving us tons of homework and my teachers think that I have a lot of time so I can help them schedule the dances and stuff. Jeez-ow.

Chapter 8

Over the next few days, Draco felt himself slip from being haunted by himself to being more full, with different feelings that he didn't know how to describe. It was like he was watching himself change, but really he wasn't changing on the outside. He noticed that his acting was excellent, but his feelings were building up on the inside.

Never in his life had he ever felt that he would ever have serious conversations, but yet Draco kept revealing his innermost feelings and opinions to an identity he only knew through pages of a Diary. He told the Diary that he was feeling more and more depressed everyday, with every second adding up to the next week, in which he was to get the Dark Mark. He wanted to escape the darkness; he didn't want to be swallowed into it more.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hermione told everything, to the point where when she went to write nearly every hour, to the point where she almost had nothing left to tell.

She was feeling so much happier, knowing that there was someone out there that was hearing her out, and understanding her, other than Harry and Ron.

She was terrified for the person that she was talking to, feeling like she was watching someone fall apart to pieces. The person she was talking to was not just writing to her, they were confiding her with their secrets and feelings.

No one else, she imagined, could ever understand her as much as them, and she figured no one else had ever understood them as much as she did.

Hermione wondered why she couldn't figure out whom it was that she was talking to. It had to be someone that she almost could've never met, seeing as how this person was someone that was so secretive. But then she remembered that he'd told her that he'd been acting his personality for the last six years, so it could be anybody.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

After Draco had gone down to his supper, he realized that he had an urge to write in the Diary. Actually, it wasn't much of an urge, it was more of a crave for contact with that person. He was feeling like he was floating on clouds as he walked to the common room, a sense he had never really never had before.

He wrote, and wrote, and wrote that night, until he felt empty of emotions except for a sensation he couldn't explain.

His heart raced when she answered back, racing so fast it was like he had just run through the castle.

He lay in bed that night and he finally told himself that he was falling for someone through pages, without even knowing who they are.

He needed to find this person, he needed to meet the person who was making him feel the way he was, he needed to know the person that he was telling everything to.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hermione woke up after a long night of dreams and looked absentmindedly at the next pages of the Diary, that was now located halfway through the book itself.

She felt like her insides were fizzing over when there was an entry there, and she read it through almost longing to know more.

She couldn't possibly, she told herself, be in love with someone she only knew through a Diary.

But her conscience knew that there was no other explanation to the way she felt when she traced her fingers over his handwriting.

She wanted to see him; she wanted to know who was hiding.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

That morning, Draco decided he couldn't keep his feelings in anymore. He needed to know whom he was talking to, for he felt like he would explode.

So the next second he had the Diary in his hands, he wrote a message he knew would change everything, expose him and reveal himself to someone he'd known throughout a Diary.

We need to meet. I can't take the suspense anymore.

There's a tree, behind the Slytherin stands on the Quidditch pitch. Meet me under it tonight after dinner.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hermione froze. She was debating whether they had been serious.

Of course they were serious, she concluded.

During dinner, she was so jittery and shaky that Ron and Harry had contemplated whether they were going to drag her down to the hospital wing. She knew that she was only nervous, but she didn't feel the need to tell them why. She didn't tell them about the Diary, nor did she ever mention that she thought that she was in love with someone that she didn't even know the identity of.

"Why are you in such a hurry, 'Mione?" Ron asked as they were standing up.

Reaching down quickly to her bag and turning towards the isle, she stopped. "Oh, you know. Studying. Lots of studying, lots of tests."

"Well, Ron and I have the same tests, but we don't have notes. D'you want to study with us?" Harry asked, walking over to her.

"Well," she hesitated nervously. "I thought that I'd go out and find a tree… and watch the sunset while studying for Ancient Runes."

They retreated after she said that, but they were still unconvinced. "Yeah. Okay. See you later, then?"

She nodded and half-walked-half-trotted down the isle and out of the Great Hall, anxious to get to the Quidditch Pitch.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The cool, spring air blew softly as Draco reached the tree behind the Slytherin stands. He had been waiting for this moment impatiently all day; the moment when he'd meet the girl he'd been talking to.

Lost in thought, he jumped a foot in the air when he heard footsteps behind him.

He swore under his breath. Standing, frozen, in front of him was Hermione Granger.

Hermione Granger-

Mudblood

Too smart for her own good

Goody-Two-Shoes

And is a friend to inseparable Weasel and Potty.

"What are you doing here?" they shot at each other with the same hate and attitude at the same time.

"I, unlike you, have a life and am waiting for someone." Draco spat.

Her eyes narrowed. "Waiting for whom?"

He smirked. "Like I would tell you." Then it occurred to him. Was she waiting for someone…too?

She stared at him in the eye, trying to look beyond his appearance. After staring with hatred and loathing for what seemed like hours, fear gathered inside of her involuntarily. She had seen it. She had seen the passion and the faking and the scared interior of him; she had seen what she had understood all of this time. She gasped and turned away, looking the opposite direction.

"It's you." She whispered to herself, wishing nothing more then to smack herself across the face. "You're the one I've been talking to."

Draco took a step back. "No, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't talk to Mudbloods."

"In the Diary, you git. I know it was you."

"Wh-no- I- how do you know that?"

"Because, ferret! I was told to meet you here, under the tree behind the Slytherin stands! It's me." She wanted to run away, she wanted to cry, she wanted to distance herself.

He shook his head. "Unbelievable."

Then, without any further ado, Hermione turned on her heels and started walking away in the opposite direction.

Draco watched her, unsure of how or what to do. "Wait." He shouted after her, without thinking first.

She stopped, but there was a struggle. "What?" she asked quietly.

"You-you said something to me the night after I wanted to end my life. What was it?" He wanted to make sure, just one last time, one last desperate attempt to refuse the truth, that it really was Hermione Mudblood Granger.

She bit her lip. She could lie; she could say she was lying. But she knew she couldn't lie about what she had said. "I said…find something worth living for." And with that, she took off walking faster, and rounded the corner, struggling to hold back tears in fear of he might still see her.

After she was to the castle entrance, she pulled around the shadowed corner of the gray building and slid down the cold, stonewall, curling up into a ball. Disbelieving but knowing it was the truth about whom she had been talking to, she sat in silence and cried until the withstanding echoes of the wolves howls flowed around the full-moonlit sky.